The Lahore Qalandards skipper reinforced his batting improvements with a priceless knock of 44 in the PSL 2023 final.
Shaheen Afridi was on fire on the night of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2023 final on Saturday (March 18). The Lahore Qalandards led his team from the front and inspired them to a victory over Multan Sultans for their second successive PSL title.
The Qalandards came out on top by just one run after the most riveting battle for supremacy at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, one where their skipper was perhaps one of the major differences between the two sides with both skills.
Yes. Shaheen not only tilted the equation in Qalandards’ favour with his crafty and skiddy left-arm fast-bowling but also through his newly-improved batting prowess lower down the order. The Qalandards captain came out blazing it away at No.7 and hammered the bowling to all parts for his knock of 44 in just 15 balls, including five sixes, to help the side reach the 200-mark.
On a high-scoring deck, Shaheen Afridi did prove expensive with the ball but his four wickets for 51 featured a priceless 18th over where the pacer went for just 6 runs and picked up three wickets to transform the game completely, pushing Sultans to a corner from where they couldn’t recover.
But for all his exploits with the ball, it was with the bat that Shaheen Afridi truly took the game away from the opposition. Even though the end margin of victory was just a solitary run, Qalandars would know it was the knock by their skipper that made the difference between a 180 finish and the eventual score of 200/6.
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And Afridi would’ve been most pleased with the number of sixes he hit, especially the one which he hammered over the mid-wicket boundary for a whopping distance of 91 metres, facing a delivery that clocked 145 kmph against Sultans right-arm pacer Ihsanullah.
Shaheen doing Afridi things 😎#HBLPSL8 | #SabSitarayHumaray | #MSvLQ pic.twitter.com/vMLix1O9jx
— PakistanSuperLeague (@thePSLt20) March 18, 2023
Taking on a short ball aimed at his body from over-the-wicket angle across the left-hand batter on the second ball of the 17th over, Shaheen gave it the full monte and smashed it away for a maximum that looked quite pleasent to the eye, and set the Qalandars up nicely for an end-overs assault that saw them blast off 71 runs in the last 4 overs.
Pakistan cricket would take Shaheen’s batting improvement as one of the big positives for them from this edition of the PSL as their spearhead adds more strings to his bow and is now an even bigger threat to the opposition.
